pantoum's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NOT-SO-INNOCENT HUMAN TURNED UPON BY OWN HORMONES 326. Well I suppose I better ask my lawyer pal Farmgrrl if I should take that link to product-wearing Dickboy�s new homepage off my site [which I did a few days later], although I doubt that his lawyer ex-wife (who paid for him to sit on his ass for the past, what, 10 plus years and play games in the name of research, at least when he wasn�t fucking my wife) would help him sue me, come to think of it. So I reckon I�ll just leave it up for a bit so that folks can see his smarmy picture and imagine him wedged down in a bathtub trying to hide from me. � My body is the earth. My body is the water. That�s what my chorus sang when we performed Diane Benjamin�s amazing �Where I Live: A Breast Cancer Oratorio.� And that pretty much encapsulates how I think about my body. My body allows me to experience back-scratching, gasping-into-her-hair pleasure and deep intimacy. It longs for the feel of wind blowing through my hair. It gets goosebumps when it encounters empathy. It allows me to experience awe and see beauty and feel such great sorrow that all I can do is rock in place sometimes, immobilized. My body is a miraculous, sensation-driven outer shell, a vehicle that transports my creative spirit, my soul-force, the big-picture me from one place to another�the living thing that gives me legs so that I can find beauty and meaning. Diane Benjamin reminds us, though, that, besides being spirit, we are also complex energy machines that are radically altered by the chemicals that we absorb. Between the sung phrases I typed above, a narrator intones Talc. Used in baby and other powders.... Methylene chloride. Used in decaffeinated coffee.... Confirmed carcinogens. And, on and on, the narrator announces her short list of the many confirmed carcinogens that can break down our machines. I try to remember this song in moments such as this, when I am craving a cigarette but trying to remind myself�and not just because the elliptical cross-trainer left my legs feeling so heavy last night�that I am a machine that requires regular care and maintenance. Now you would think that five people with breast cancer, two people with ovarian cancer, one person with prostate cancer, a father dead in his early sixties from cancer, and a boat-load of (mostly average weight) relatives with diabetes and amputated limbs would be enough to bang me over the head with the fact that my machine needs attention but, sadly, it took my anger at Pottergrrrl�s cruel message to really kick my butt into gear. An why is that? The thing is, she really hurt my feelings and crushed my already pathetic excuse for an ego, but I know that she is absolutely right. I have made every excuse in the book to avoid just damn doing more things to compensate for the fact that I�m taking a drug that makes people gain weight.
Since I am a poet, I use personification in such moments, dub my body the Complex Energy Machine that I must provide with specific fuel and walk like a dog. And I work to understand the metabolic processes that my body executes each time I give it food and exercise. And, because I am a poet who has a hard time stepping out of my head, I remind myself that artists before me have also measured out their lives in coffee spoons. Storms swept through here Saturday, so I only went outside long enough to take a (wet) walk through the gardens and pick up some groceries. I also rented ENRON: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Grizzly Man, but didn�t watch either. Instead I spent the day reinforcing my understanding of the physiological functions of my body. I reviewed literature on the glycemic index and glucose intolerance and muscles that remain deprived of energy even if you consume the right nutrients in reasonable quantities and I must say that everything seems stacked against you if your cells are desensitized to the action of insulin. I�m lucky though because I spent most of my life in good shape, athletic, and I still stand a decent chance of addressing the insulin intolerance that has decimated my family. So here I sit reminding myself of the wonderful powers of antioxidents as I record the details of my machine maintenance in an elegantly simple Excel workbook that I recently created so that all the information I need is in one convenient place. Since I�m a person who flits from subject to subject �you don�t say?�while trying to decipher my landscape in a manner that allows me to employ it creatively (before I get sidetracked by another beautiful woman or lovely scene), since I am a distractable grrrl, I need this kind of structure, especially for topics that are foreign to me. Meanwhile, I dropped the Weight Watchers I was trying to follow in favor of the new low-carb, high-protein approach that my (gorgeous) doctor and I determined to be my best option. This means that I am eating and exercising in a manner that causes my body to burn fat, not carbohydrate, as my primary energy source. Or, as my doctor says, I am �adjusting my insulin spigot.� I say when one energy source fails, switch to the other one. It just makes sense. Right? � Now it�s a 1 AM and I am trying to convince myself that I am tired. I stayed up till 4 last night thinking about a passover service I attended at a Unitarian-Universalist fellowship. I love this group of spiritual progressives who weave the need for social justice into the story of Moses. (Their story incorporated the genocide in Darfur and was definitely not your Mama�s Charlton Heston tale.) Hung out downtown for a bit tonight and watched a street performance of Capoeira (an Afro-Brazilian art form originally developed by slaves in colonial Brazil as a way to free their bodies and spirits. It is now a unique combination of martial arts, dance, aerobics, creativity and really cool body language). Then I cooked myself a measured-portions dinner and watched Grizzly Man after all. I love the fact that, when we�re seriously flawed and floundering for a way to thrive without alcohol or drugs or other destructive behaviors, some of us are lucky and realize that nature can save us. (Of course, the grizzlies also killed him, what, seven years later.) I really like this filmmaker�s perspective, and note that, despite the tragic end, his film is ultimately about someone who was almost crippled by his human foibles finding grace in Alaska. Okay. I gotta go to sleep now because the president of our chorus called today to say that, surprise!, a local newspaper�s ad deadline is tomorrow so could I please, please, please create an ad. (Yes folks, it�s Bird�s instamatic artomatic whirly-giggin� instantaneous create-on-demand design services inc. Just pull my lever and watch me perform. Baby.) LISTENING TO: Ani DeFranco�s �Dilate� (which will probably not help me fall asleep, actually). READING: San Francisco trannie Emil Heiple�s Body of Loss (a zine). I started reading the Urban Hermitt�s Flow Chronicles too, but just couldn�t get into it �I guess because I�ve never felt that I�m in the wrong body. Instead, I just get frustrated when people tell me that the fact that my body looks a certain way is supposed to mean that I should limit how I use it or live my life. SANG IN SHOWER: M�xy Fruvous�s �The Drinking Song� 10:25 p.m. - 2006-4-19 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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